Winning the Game
by marginaliana
Summary: Turtle decides not to fake her own death, in the end; it isn't necessary and anyway Angela would worry. Written for lynnmonster in Yuletide 2008, beta by livii.


**North**

Turtle decides not to fake her own death, in the end; it isn't necessary and anyway Angela would worry. But she never doubted that she would follow in Sandy's footsteps in creating a puzzle, never doubted that she would hold something secret to be found. It's why, after Turtle wins the game, Grace never knows where Turtle goes after school on Tuesdays; it's why, until Sandy's death, Theo never asks and Turtle never tells (when he finally does ask, the morning after the funeral, she breaks down in his arms and tells him the story, starting with "Sam Westing loved puzzles more than he loved people, at first").

She arranges for the courier company to deliver the envelopes at sunset on the fourth of July; the cost is ridiculous but the symbolism is essential. Each envelope contains a direction and a name, and a note ("The prize is ten million dollars."). They will be four teams of three, her specially selected heirs (a lawyer, a florist, a poet; a liar, a hacker, a thief. Oh, yes, and a mistake. Unknowingly, Turtle has sent one of the envelopes to the wrong person) - if all of them make it to the second stage. Turtle thinks they will.

As dusk comes, Turtle stands at the window of 4 Sunrise Lane, holding Theo's hand, and thinks about the fact that in some ways, she's still walking the maze he set out for her, still searching for the answer to the ultimate puzzle.

**South**

Her life revolves around him like the needle of a compass. He cheers when she gets her first job, smiles when she makes her first million, laughs when she tells him that Theo proposed and her first reaction was to kick him in the shin.

Sometimes, Turtle resents it, particularly when she's in the phase of insisting that she be called 'T. R.' instead of Turtle. Still, it's worth it to have someone who really _gets_ her in a way that no one else ever does. Sandy is like kin to her (she can't quite get out of the habit of calling him 'Sandy' at first, until somehow when she's in front of the WPP board for the first time 'Mr. Eastman' comes easily to her lips). Grace and Jake are proud of her, of course, and Angela and Baba love her without question, but Sandy understands her.

When Alice is born, Turtle finally starts to understand what was in it for _him_, and that year she arranges for Westing Paper Products to sponsor the biggest Fourth of July fireworks display the city has ever seen. He doesn't thank her, but she doesn't need him to. His white, not-quite-even smile is enough.

**East**

Turtle's first interaction with the group doesn't go particularly well. She hasn't slept, and it takes her ten minutes to get them all to shut up long enough to give her prepared speech about mysterious Sam Westing's secret, second will, recently discovered.

"I don't even think there really is a prize," says Mark Jones, slouching belligerently at the Team West table. "I think it's all just a pathetic joke."

Turtle maintains her bland facade, but inside she is shaking. _I planned for this_, she reminds herself. But before she can answer him, Alice Deere jumps in.

"Don't be stupid," she says. "Why would the rich, successful head of a multi-billion-dollar corporation waste time with something like this unless it were real?"

They all look at Turtle with wide eyes now, all but Alice, who knows her too well, and Eric Shaw the attorney from Team South, who has worked with her on enough Westing Paper Products' buyout deals to know that she's rich and has a sense of humor.

"You are free to depart at any time," says Turtle, falling back on a trick Sandy taught her to sound older. Mark stands up to leave. "Of course, if you leave now," Turtle continues, pulling the stack of envelopes from her briefcase, "your team will forfeit the first check."

**West**

Watching her possible heirs maneuver for position is both exciting and tiring. Exciting because Turtle genuinely likes each of them now, even the scheming ones, even the mistake. Tiring, though, because she doesn't know who will win, if any of them do.

Mark is the hacker; he keeps breaking into her files and causing the IT department no end of headaches. Since Turtle keeps the details of the plan in a box under her mattress, she doesn't think he's any further ahead than the others. At the second meeting of heirs he mentions his father, and Turtle bites the inside of her cheek. Evan Jones had helped her open her first trading account – illegally, as it turned out, since she was just sixteen. The black mark it created on his record never went away, and Mark's inclusion here is his chance, Turtle's chance, to right that wrong.

Aside from hacking into her computer, and being a pain in Turtle's neck, Mark seems to have spent most of his time the last few weeks flirting with Katya Ivanova from Team South. Katya had talked non-stop for twenty minutes when Turtle met her in the flower shop to pick out the wreaths for Sandy's funeral, and her vivaciousness had made the awfulness of the day seem almost bearable. Turtle wonders if Katya has put the two together; if she has, she isn't saying, despite her talkative nature.

It's easy to be fond of them, Turtle finds, even though she doesn't really understand them. She wishes she'd been able to master Sandy's trick of predicting exactly what people are going to do. Turtle has never understood people individually; markets, risk, the aggregate ebb and flow of public confidence – these are the things that Turtle feels instinctively. She can tell from the amount of frizz in her hair to invest in candy and liquor; she can tell from the ache in her right big toe to buy an umbrella company. But she's never been able to apply that knowledge to her parents or any of her dates, and it's led to more than one disastrous situation at the dinner table.

At the second meeting, watching them from behind one-way glass, she's still just as baffled; Mark is deep in a heated argument with Eric about the future of online stock trading, casting a sidelong glance at Katya whenever he makes a point. Turtle doesn't understand what he thinks they could possibly have in common. Katya, meanwhile, is explaining the language of flowers to her teammate Sarah, a personal assistant at a local business school and the one person Turtle knows nothing about (there are a lot of girls named Sarah Smith in the city, it appears, and somewhere out there one of Crow's cousins is having a very uninteresting day). The others sit in silence, preoccupied with their own thoughts, except for the members of Team East who are passing notes back and forth across the table.

It's enough to make Turtle tear out her hair, trying to predict them all. Instead, then, she focuses on the dynamics of the teams as a whole. Team North (Alice, Nicolas the library school student, and Ellen the artist) is the most creative of the teams, and so far they've surprised her twice by figuring things out that she knows Alice, at least, could not have done on her own. Team South (Katya, Sarah, and Dave, whose wife waits outside at each meeting) hasn't really meshed – they all have other priorities. Team East (James the would-be poet, Brian the runner who idolizes Doug Hoo, and Erin the nurse) is the team she trusts most not to break the rules – even when James gets carried away, the others bring him back to earth. And Team West (Mark, Eric, and Amy the designer) is the most aggressive and persistent, the most willing to do whatever it takes to win.

Any one of them, people or teams, could come out ahead, in the end.

**Boom**

Turtle had thought it would be over by now. The last words have been read, the last clues given. The deadline is tonight, in an hour, and she doesn't have a contingency plan if no one comes.

_Puzzles_, Turtle thinks, _don't always fit together the way you think they should_.

Turtle stands at the window of 4 Sunrise Lane and looks at the empty driveway. Theo comes in, resting his hands on her shoulders. Turtle lifts one hand to touch his, but doesn't turn away from the sight of dusk slowly falling on the spruce trees.

"Who will it be?" Theo asks.

"I don't know," says Turtle. Eric has given up the puzzle, she knows; he's rich enough that he doesn't need the money and it's probably too much for his pride to bear to cater to a dead man. Most of the others gave answers at the final meeting this afternoon, but none of them had said the right things, none of them had said enough. It might yet be quiet Nicolas, Turtle thinks, who has watched her probably as much as she's watched him, or Erin, who understands the minds of dying men more than most. Both of them like puzzles; both of them have depths that Turtle was the first to see.

The driveway is still empty, but there is a knock at the study door. Turtle turns in surprise, then smiles with joy. She hadn't wanted to admit hoping for this, and now she won't have to.

"Hi Turtle," says Alice. "I won!"


End file.
